


Take It From The Top

by Robertdoc



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), WandaVision (TV)
Genre: Awesome Wanda Maximoff, F/M, Speculation, Spoilers, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29255283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robertdoc/pseuds/Robertdoc
Summary: Based on nothing but speculation, personal theories and hopes for the final act of WandaVisionAfter Wanda finds out the truth of her show, who really created it, who manipulated her into starring in it and how/why, what she has planned next for her children and a rebuilt Mind Stone [and on who's behalf], she cannot get up as a familiar wave of crushing guilt - more than all the past ones combined - weigh her down.Until all the Wandas from past episodes guest star one last time, to help her see what she really is, isn't and who she really wanted to be all along. Then her dead TV husband and three new allies help finish getting her ready for a triumphant final act.A Wanda character study that hopefully doesn't work harder than the show ultimately does at actually healing her, building her back up and escaping the outdated "all powerful woman goes crazy/unstable" cliches it was heavily flirting with - and hopefully finishes getting away from - before the end of episode 5 showed a path out that this story fully charges towards.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Take It From The Top

**Author's Note:**

> There are no spoilers beyond episode 5 to watch out for, as this is purely speculation - half of this story being a personal collection of theories [based in part on some still unexplained promo/teaser footage like the Halloween clips, and the snippet of Wanda being blasted by what looks like the Mind Stone], and an effort to jump ahead to what might/hopefully happen after - when hopefully Wanda will be exonerated as more victim than creator of the show [or at least half and half], and hopefully the show will put half as much effort into letting her heal, pick herself up and realize her greater power [not just in magic] before the final act as I do here, instead of flirting even more with certain "all powerful woman is too crazy and unstable from grief" cliches that episode 5 hopefully laid the groundwork to back away from.
> 
> But in case it doesn't, this what-if/pre-emptive guess will still try to do the job for it.

Wanda Maximoff felt crushed by grief. A feeling that should have been very familiar to her by now. Especially now that she finally remembered….had been allowed to remember….had let herself remember….everything.

Which was exactly why it felt so much worse this time.

Remembering everything that had been done….to her and by her….had almost always crushed her. But now finally remembering everything about the last several days – and now these last several minutes in particular – made her never want to get up again.

Even worse than when she never wanted to get up again before…. _she_ found her.

And like that, remembering everything again sunk her even deeper to the floor of her house – her set – as the world….her world….her fake, flickering in and out of reality world….unraveled around her.

By _her_ design….a design only possible because it was Wanda’s too. A design she so easily let herself believe was her own….and his. A design she knew she would want to believe was hers, because she told her. In so many words.

And thus the memories weighed down harder once again. Both from what she was no longer made to forget, and from the long villain speech _she_ just finished telling her to fill in the blanks.

A speech about how Agnes – or Agatha Harkness, apparently – was a real honest to God cosmic witch. How five years ago, she found the remnants of the Mind Stone on Thanos’s farm and spent the next five years trying to rebuild it. How despite her power….and the power of the being she was working for…she didn’t have enough and couldn’t find enough to restore the Stone’s full power.

Until Wanda was Blipped back into existence.

Until Agnes – Agatha – came to her in New York, first played the part of a nosy but helpful new neighbor, got her to talk about Vision in a way even the surviving Avengers couldn’t, gave her an escape from the grief by helping her develop her powers in a way even HYDRA and the Stone couldn’t, and then….

And then when Wanda was powerful enough, was still grief stricken enough – was still vulnerable enough to tell her all about the sitcom worlds that helped her escape her parents’ deaths a half-hour at a time, in the last healthy escape from grief she would ever try – Agatha was ready to make her a star.

By showing her the halfway rebuilt Mind Stone. By combining their powers together to finally make it whole again. By losing herself again to the memories of escape...the new ideas of escape, and the ideas of what else might just be possible now…

The ideas Agatha unleashed the new and improved Mind Stone to trap her in.

Just as Wanda had used the old Mind Stone’s powers to trap her future teammates in altered realities, now she too would be trapped in one. In a distortion of reality that Agatha and her new Stone bent to make her think Vision was still alive, and held captive by S.W.O.R.D. A distortion that allowed her to break his body out, without realizing she was ‘rescuing’ a metal corpse and not a living being.

A distortion that allowed her to think she had him back. Had a way to keep him back. And that nothing else mattered beyond that. That there was nothing else beyond that reality at all.

Hence the world of WandaVision was born. Everything else beyond that world was either forgotten by choice, or otherwise.

Hence details like Agnes – _Agatha_ – ensuring Wanda used enough magic to not only keep Westview hidden, but enough for Agatha to divert for herself, further power the Mind Stone and dissolve the barriers between reality, were easily ignored or easily not uncovered.

Hence details like S.W.O.R.D’s efforts to break in could be dismissed as an enemy threat. Especially since Agatha’s additional puppeteering of Director Hayward not only helped Wanda gain access to Vision, but would ensure all outside eyes would stay on Wanda as the real threat – and since she was too powerful to stop anyway, their efforts to try wouldn’t do any real harm.

At least they weren’t until three sets of eyes looked closer.

Until Vision started to look closer. Until Agatha had to overplay her hand and bring Pietro back before Wanda actually started to look closer. Granted, she didn’t have the time or resources to get the right Pietro, but it did prove the barriers between universes were breaking down ahead of schedule.

Her damage control worked better when Vision found Agatha in her car in the 90s Halloween “episode” and she had to put on her “best performance yet” as a newly awakened trapped citizen – until they reached the barrier and Agatha dropped the act at the very last minute to “repair him” for good.

Or for at least the length of the 2000s mockumentary episode, when he and Wanda were united again and fighting for “their home” Granted, it was after S.W.O.R.D found its way in, thanks to those three increasingly annoying people after they’d exposed the even more annoying Director – and then by extension, Agatha. But by then, the damage was already done.

By then, even when Wanda somehow found the Mind Stone in her house/set, looked right at it, was blasted by it and was then allowed – by magic and by herself – to remember everything, Agatha already had everything she’d wanted from their ‘show’

She had a fully rebuilt Mind Stone, an entire town under enough magical influence to give her cover, and an Avenger under enough magical influence – her own and Agatha’s – to eventually distort and break down reality itself. So much so that by the time she snapped out of it, the barriers of this town and this world were growing so unstable that the larger mission was all but accomplished.

By the time Agatha reached this point in her exposition, Wanda was too overwhelmed to pay much attention to the rest. Something about Agatha working for another magical being trapped in the multiverse – his name might have started with an M – who would soon have the power to break out, then arm himself with the Mind Stone, now that Wanda’s leading role in Agatha’s show had helped make it possible.

When Agatha revealed he also wanted her sons as a bonus, Wanda started paying full attention again. Albeit not enough to stop her from taking them.

Even and especially when Wanda accused Agatha of using her, and she shot back with her most cutting one-liner in the entire show.

“Babe, I didn’t do anything you didn’t want me to do. Or anything you hadn’t already done before.”

Thanks to all the power she had gained from Wanda, the Stone and the Westview anomaly, she might have overpowered Wanda even without voicing that brutal truth to her. But it certainly erased all doubt.

It definitely kept her out for the count long enough for Agatha to poof the kids away. And to announce she’d be leaving this reality with them as soon as the anomaly opened a portal back to her boss, likely mere moments from now. 

And to offer that since there were “no hard feelings” she could repair Westview after she was free and clear, put Wanda back under in a world where she and Vision were both alive and suburbanites, erase her memory of their sons and make her forget everything else again as a ‘series finale parting gift.”

When Wanda was still too shaken to answer, Agatha took it as a yes and headed out, to the canned applause and cheers of her own invisible audience one final time.

************************************

That was mere moments ago. More than long enough for the grief, the memories – and the guilt – to keep Wanda too weighed down to go after Agatha.

Even with her sons being taken further away from her. Even with them about to be taken from this very universe at any minute. And even with Vision…or whatever she had turned him into…nowhere to be found. Even with all that fresh in her mind, she couldn’t move.

Because every other horrible thing that was all her fault was even fresher. More than all the other times before. Somehow that was still possible after all this time.

Somehow she had found a way. And this time there was no coming back from it. How could there be after all this?

Why should there be?

Agnes – _AGATHA!!_ – was right. She had always been right. She guessed exactly what Wanda was willing to do – wiling to believe and ignore outside all reason – if she gave her the chance, and she was exactly right every step of the way. Like all the others before her had been.

Because all of this was nothing Wanda hadn’t done before. Nothing she hadn’t done to too many people before, and had only gotten a taste of her own medicine for it now. Nothing she hadn’t vowed never to do again, yet did anyway. With only the barest outside influence that Agatha needed to seal the deal, just in case.

Now it was certainly sealed. She’d gotten everything she wanted Wanda to so eagerly give her. And she’d given over so much more than that.

The most powerful item in all of creation, rebuilt and in a new enemy’s hands because of her.

All those innocent people in Westview cast against their will as guest stars, now surely doomed to even worse…all because Wanda needed a supporting cast. Badly enough that she never questioned why they were there, even in those few moments where she could and should have.

Wanda might not have been the exact “her” whose voice had trapped them all in their own heads. But it never would have gotten inside them if not for…her.

And now her own sons would be the next to pay for it. 

Her sons…who were only here because Wanda let herself co-create a beautiful, horrible world that made their existence possible. A world Agatha helped her build probably exactly for that purpose. So she and whatever villain was commanding her could have all powerful beings to turn into evil experiments and foot soldiers…like their mother was made to be.

Wanda had doomed her own sons to become exactly like her. Had doomed them the second she let an unnatural world she helped create create them. Had doomed the second she let Agatha help her forget everything she should have remembered, long before she magically made her forget everything she should have remembered.

Now she remembered everything and so much more. Now she couldn’t move because of it, even though anyone in her position…anyone so much better than her…wouldn’t have hesitated to go after her. To get them back. To do something, anything other than what she’d already done…

To immediately reject Agnes’s final offer to forget. To do what she should have done long before she ever heard of Westview, S.W.O.R.D or a rebuilt Mind Stone. To be like…someone other than Wanda Maximoff…

But wanting that already was the whole reason she was here, wasn’t it?

And if she wanted it that badly after what happened then, then what about now? What about that ‘series finale’ offer? What about…

“There she is!”

*******************************

Whether Wanda had completely lost her mind enough on her own to imagine all the different Wandas from every “episode” here in the living room, or whether Agatha had brought them here as one last distraction/call back…it probably didn’t matter either way.

The end result was still the same.

The 50s and 60s black-and-white Wandas telling her dinner wouldn’t make itself unless she made it. The 70s Wanda in color and offering to help her get a groove on. The 80s Wanda with Sparky in her arms – though conveniently holding no other reminders of her sons. The 90s Wanda in her Halloween costume, and the 2000s Wanda who just wouldn’t stop looking at some invisible camera to her right.

All of them together again for the first time. All of them blending their respective catchphrases, one-liners and canned background laughter for a collective message. The same one they always had.

Come with us and you can forget everything. This time, forever.

Which should have been so easy to agree to. Had been so easy to agree to. Especially right now, when there was so much more that was too painful to remember. So much more she could get back and never have to think of again.

All the Wandas of the pasts who had everything, telling the only one who could never get it right that she could be one of them for the rest of time. As long as she never again noticed what was outside of Westview. Or looked in any way at what was inside it.

It was nothing she didn’t already want to do. Nothing she hadn’t already done before.

And yet as the jokes and catchphrases kept coming, the now mocking studio audience kept laughing and ringing in her ears, and the various scripts kept being recited, Wanda couldn’t bear to follow it any longer.

Bear it or anything else anymore. In any reality.

Yet it didn’t stop the Wandas who helped make this comedy of errors happen. It didn’t stop them from bearing down on the one who made it and them entirely possible. Nothing could. Nothing would.

Nothing should.

And yet Wanda did what she always did against all reason, logic and sanity. Plead for something she wasn’t meant to have.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!!”

****************************

The magical force emanating from her would have blown any real people back thousands of miles. For imaginary doubles of Wanda, it only blew them back about 30 feet.

At least they were able to get up on their feet. Unlike the one who took them off it. For she was still on her knees, like she had been ever since Agatha left.

Only now, she was crying softly into hands that could have ended the world moments ago. Had made the likely future elimination of many worlds possible long before that.

All that power, and she couldn’t even move enough to wipe her eyes dry, now that the floodgates had finally opened. Floodgates that had barely held since the second she reappeared in Wakanda for the first time in five years.

Floodgates that were surely broken beyond repair this time. Just like her.

“Why?”

Wanda still couldn’t lift her head up, if only to see which Wanda asked that odd question. It took a far too gentle touch on her shoulder to change that, and to empower her to see that 80s Wanda – 80s mother Wanda – was kneeling in front of her.

“Why?” she repeated before elaborating. “Why don’t you want to come with us?”

“Because…” real Wanda choked out, both from the strain of speaking again, and the strain of using her regular accent after days of dropping it. Still, she had just enough to complete “Because…when I did, I ruined everything….”

“Then why not come with us and forget you did?” 80s mother Wanda asked in a still far too gentle tone. “Why let yourself remember all that?”

“Because…” Wanda started, then finished with more bitter clarity. “Because I don’t deserve to forget.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” 80s mother Wanda asked, still far more kindly than she had any right to. “It’s not like you’d remember that anyway.”

“But they would!” Wanda found herself stating with a sudden burst of energy. “Vision…or whatever’s left of Vision….my sons…all the people here…everyone I hurt, everyone I let _her_ hurt….everyone she _will_ hurt…they won’t get to forget…”

“But if you could, you would spare them from all that?”

“I’m the one who gave them all that in the first place! Whether she put the idea in my head or not!”

“So if we went back in time and she offered you all this….offered you Westview, Vis and our boys…you still wouldn’t give ‘all that’ to them and everyone else too, knowing what you know now?”

“ _Of course_ not!” real Wanda said, the way she should have said to Agatha minutes ago. When she was in no condition to say anything.

“Yeah, thought so…” 80s mother Wanda said, again in that gentle, “teaching a lesson” motherly tone.

Just as she did with the boys when Sparky died – when she still wasn’t aware of reality enough to realize how hypocritical she was about death. But whatever this version of that version of Wanda was now…she was self-aware enough to lead real Wanda towards a lesson she already knew.

But wasn’t strong enough to see without being led gently along the way first. Like a TV mother would. Like a real mother…even one that had been gone for years…

Yet that was something any version of Wanda would have remembered deep, deep inside her. No matter what layers were placed on her to make her consciously forget.

So maybe whatever made this Wanda, and the others, didn’t just come from TV. Or from Agatha. Or from the worst of Wanda.

Whatever it was, it was empowered enough to keep going. And in turn, it had empowered real Wanda enough to begin to listen.

“I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. You messed up, kiddo. But you already know that. Know it enough that in your right mind, you would never do it again. That’s more than so many other people can brag about. Some of which used to live right near here.”

“But that’s just it,” Wanda remembered. “I thought I would never do it again after the first time. Or the second time. And I did anyway. Why should I feel better that I never want to do something this terrible again…if I just wind up doing it again anyway?”

“Does that mean you should stop trying not to?” the 50s Wanda suddenly weighed in.

“If I fail like this…” real Wanda argued with a bit less force than before.

“Then by that logic, you never should have tried fixing the Ultron mess, since that led to Lagos. Am I right?” the 2000s Wanda spoke with a little more sarcasm – and a lot more turning to the “camera” afterwards – than real Wanda might have preferred. But the point of the actual words sunk in a bit.

“What my far out future self means….” 70s Wanda left hanging, before focusing back to her even more futuristic self.

“It means even if you mess up again and again, it doesn’t cancel out everything between those messes. Wanting to make things right after Ultron gave you a new family, a new purpose….it gave you Vision. And even after Lagos, after the airport, after the Raft, that family….at least enough of them…picked you back up again. He picked you up again.”

“Well, who’s going to pick me up after _this_ , then?” Wanda snapped, before she let herself get carried away with pipe dreams of a silver lining. “He’ll be gone again! And even if I survive this, the others can’t break me out of whatever prison they’ll put me in this time. So what then?”

“Okay, there’s that….” the 60s Wanda didn’t start out encouragingly. Fortunately, the 80s Wanda picked the slack back up.

“The point is, maybe it won’t be them this time. But could you imagine it’d be them last time? Maybe something else will pick you back up that you never expected before! Maybe two special somethings, as a matter of fact…or some other miracles you haven’t found yet! But you’re not gonna find them if you give up on trying. You never have before.”

The group of Wandas stayed quiet as their creator started taking their TV-friendly lessons and closing speeches to heart. When she appeared ready to hear more, the costumed 90s Wanda made herself heard for the first time.

“Do you want to be someone who stops trying? If not, then who _do_ you want to be?”

That was the loaded question to end all questions. One that Wanda thought she knew the answer to already. Or maybe it was one she didn’t think about hard enough.

“I wanted…I wanted to be like all of you,” she said her original answer. “I wanted to be someone who wasn’t _me_ ….or at least someone who hadn’t lost everything….everyone…like me. And she knew that too.”

“But we’re not real. In here or out there,” 80s Wanda pointed out. “But the Wanda who had everything and everyone she ever loved for real…the Wanda who fixed her mistakes enough to gain even more people she loved and who loved her…that Wanda got everything you ever wanted all along, no matter how long she had it. That Wanda’s the only real one here. And you still are.”

“Real enough to go back out there and kick that…” 50s Wanda paused before whispering quiet enough that no invisible censors would hear “Witch…to the curb.”

“She’s too powerful. I made her too powerful,” real Wanda lamented anew, albeit not as easily as before.

“Because she cheated,” 80s Wanda lobbed back.

“She did exactly what HYDRA, Ultron and Thanos did. She cheated. Because she was too scared to face you when you were at your best. Because she knew if she waited until you were even a little better, she wouldn’t have had a chance. Because then she’d be dealing with the Wanda who knew better, who always tried to make things right, and who would _never_ help anyone hurt someone, unknowingly or not, the _second_ they could see the whole picture.”

“And that Wanda….well, she’s… _you’re_ …too powerful.”

Wanda shook her head in disbelief by instinct, but she knew on some level it was forced. She tried to tell herself quietly that these words, not to mention their speakers, couldn’t possibly be real – but on some level she knew she was just reading from another kind of script again. So she went on to speak it aloud as a last resort.

“I’m just telling myself this….I made you all up to tell me this, like I made up you before…what I did is too, too…”

Before she could say “unforgivable” she heard the far more unlikely word “Nuh huh” from the almost as unlikely source of 2000s Wanda – looking right at her instead of a non-existent camera, if only for the moment.

“You’re not some psycho. Some supervillain. Some woman who just went crazy because she’s too powerful to stay stable, cause she’s a woman and all that other [BLEEP]! You just got taken advantage of at your lowest, like we all do at one time or another! But you’re not gonna be that low now! Am I right?”

“I want you to be…” real Wanda said when she could speak again. Yet there was still room for one last sliver of doubt. “But how can I trust you? Trust me?”

“And so what if it is just _you_ saying this?” 90s Wanda came back. “Isn’t that better than us?”

That went against everything Wanda believed in before she got here. Yet if there was a slight chance to change that now, this was it.

“As much as you look up to us and characters like us…we could _never_ have survived, recovered from or gotten back up from everything the _real_ you did. We’re just not written to. And we were never meant to be,” 90s Wanda started her final third act climatic speech. “Yet here you are…the real you, so determined to make yourself make things right, filled with such desire to do the right thing in the last act…that you made copies of yourself out of thin air to kick you in the butt!”

“Isn’t someone like that far more inspirational than any TV fake?”

************************************

Wanda closed her eyes. Not out of sadness, not to block out reality, but to truly and honestly settle herself down. To take in everything she knew, everything she’d forgotten, everything she’d learned once again and everything she let herself understand for the first time.

Everything that made her Wanda. The various Wandas she pretended she was, the Wandas she thought she was, the Wandas she wanted to be, the Wandas she was….and the Wanda that was all of them in between.

The only real Wanda in this room. The only Wanda she wanted to be. The Wanda who didn’t want to be the worst Wandas she’d created anymore. The Wandas she never wanted to be – never would be when she was thinking straight. The Wandas who helped make all this when she wasn’t.

But none of them were here now.

And when Wanda opened her eyes, none of the other Wandas were there either. It was really just her now.

That still might not be enough.

But she wanted so badly to try and make it so. Even if she was the only one.

“Wanda?”

Then she wasn’t alone anymore.

Whether it was because Wanda was calm enough that real people could come in, or because they finally found their way in through the other chaos outside, the end result was the same.

Her husband was home. And he’d brought three others with him. Geraldine…no, Captain Rambeau, she sorted out from S.W.O.R.D’s intrusion earlier today. There was an FBI agent with her, far less gung-ho and far more of a reassuring presence than the soldiers around him earlier. And another woman with a comically overwhelmed look on her face, but someone Wanda could still sense was more capable than she looked.

That wasn’t all Wanda could see clearly right now. For the first time, she was willing to see it more clearly.

If only for a moment before the true sight of Vision’s lifeless body standing in front of her was too much.

Even if it was possible to forgive herself for everything else, mercy for that was a step too far. Better to admit that now in whatever time they had left.

“I’m so sorry, Vision….” Wanda gasped out, overwhelmed with sorrow once more as if the last several minutes of her self pep-talk never happened. “I failed you…”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I failed you too.”

Wanda opened her eyes back up, seeing Vision as she wanted to see him yet again. Alive, well and apparently reassuring. But this time it didn’t feel like her doing.

Maybe the reality distortion around Westview was still strong enough to project a living Vision without Wanda’s help. Maybe that’s why the others weren’t as creeped out around him as they might have been if they could see the lifeless version of him.

That didn’t explain his reassuring, and frankly very weird, words.

“What are you talking about? You have nothing to be sorry for,” Wanda started. “I did so much worse to you…”

“Perhaps. But that doesn’t negate the wrong I did you,” Vision resumed. “I assumed you were the one controlling everything. And everyone. But you weren’t.”

“You had every right to believe that.”

“Not entirely. I might not still remember everything before Westview. My very existence now, after my death, may still be unexplainable. But I should have remembered and known enough to know then, somewhere deep down, that you would never be capable of such evil. Not under your own free will. And even then, not without having the most unendurable pain exploited by the most vile of influences. Which our former neighbor has certainly revealed herself to be.”

“If I had thought clearly enough to see that, I would have found out Agnes’s true intentions long before the Halloween episode. Long before she could have made me forget them. And long before everything she’s done to our family, and this town, right now. But I didn’t give you the faith and trust you needed, and which you’d earned long before Westview, to break free before then too. And for that, I am sorry.”

Wanda could and probably should have answered back that it wasn’t nearly as sorry as she felt, for so much worse. Yet she was starting to sense this wasn’t the time or place for it. If there was one. If there were any left for them at all.

“The person you’re talking about…that’s a person who would know she has to say goodbye. Forever this time,” Wanda shuddered. “But I can’t be that person…”

She sensed the others freeze up with caution – not undeserved in the slightest. She knew what they were fearing from such a phrase, either deep down or on the surface.

So much of her still wanted to live up, or down, to those fears even now. So much of her was still unconvinced that when the time came, she could actually face those fears and win this time. Especially after those last words of his.

And yet, with every fiber of her being that was still under her full control, she made herself say the words “Not yet.” Which made the next several come out easier.

“Not until we get our sons back. Not until they’re safe. Not until…you can say a real goodbye to them. And me.”

Vision’s face changed to an expression of pride, longing, sorrow and then finally acceptance, in a way that Wanda, Agatha and no other magical force could fake. Of course they couldn’t.

Of course someone who evolved into something….someone far more human than ever imagined, would evolve into something far more than imagined after death as well. Wanda offered a silent apology for ever thinking otherwise, knowing there were still many more left to say aloud. After.

An after that was still very much uncertain to happen. The renewed sounds of chaos and distortion outside soon reminded Wanda of that. Which also had the side effect of making her remember the others around Vision as well. The others who she put in grave danger, then and now.

“I didn’t want this,” she started to try and convince them. “I did want this place…but I never would have wanted…”

“We know,” Captain Rambeau jumped ahead. “We know.” She came up to Wanda, facing her in this room for the first time since…

“I’m sorry I….” Wanda started before being interrupted again.

“I know.”

Wanda looked clearly at Captain Rambeau, without anything affecting either of them, for the first time. What she saw wasn’t someone acting – maliciously or not – or someone brainwashed. All she saw was an understanding that perhaps went beyond merely knowing the truth about Wanda’s intentions. Something deeper…sadder, even.

Something she’d only seen in herself, in a mirror, on those first few weeks back before Agatha found her.

If they survived, Wanda briefly wondered if she had the right to ask about that later. But whatever might come of that then, now Wanda saw something in the Captain she hadn’t seen in any person since…that day in Wakanda. Something that said she was exactly what she said she was when Wanda was too distorted inside to believe her, or anyone else in any world, days ago.

An ally.

She looked beside her and saw that, albeit in a less intense fashion, in the FBI agent as well. 

The scientist might have let her see that too, if the rest of the collapsing world around them was less distracting. “Okay then, now let’s figure out what we don’t know. Like how to avoid jumping the shark with the rest of the show!” she strangely said.

Wanda only had one answer for that right now. She just didn’t know how to phrase it. This was too big and damaging to say she’d completely make right, and saying she’d make it better didn’t seem to do it justice. But finally, for the first time in a while, she didn’t need a script or to hide behind alter egos to say the right words.

“I’m going to make it _stop_.”

Tony, Steve, Natasha, Clint and most any other Avenger besides her would have been more comfortable in this position – being the one others turned towards to lead a mission and tell them how to pull it off. She still wasn’t entirely convinced she should take such reigns right now, even to stop something she helped make. But maybe it shouldn’t be up to her.

“I have no right to ask this from any of you. But will you help me?” she put the power of trust that she’d nowhere near earned yet in their hands. Taking a leap of faith that someone else somehow gave to her one afternoon in Sokovia.

“What do you need from us?” the Agent dared trust her enough to ask. The Captain, the scientist and Vision gave silent but no less powerful assurances that they were with her too.

With that, Wanda took command.

“Agatha still controls everyone in town. When I break that, get them as far away from here as you can,” she said with unfamiliar but refreshing confidence. “Vision, you free as many of them as you can before then.”

“You don’t want me to fight her with you?” Vision inquired.

“I want her to focus on just me. At first,” Wanda said with more bite. “I want to do to her what she did to me. Soften her up so she doesn’t see the bigger blows coming. I don’t know how capable I am of holding her off myself, but I need to try. Long enough so she loses focus on them, our kids and all of you. Until it’s too late for her.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Vision answered. “Her reality is distorted as well. She believes the Wanda she knows is no match for her. But she hasn’t met the Wanda I know. And she certainly hasn’t met the real versions of…I believe she titled it ‘WandaVision’…together.”

Wanda tried her best to ignore that she, of all people, might be the last one to see such a sight. At least ignore it for however long this battle would take.

“Don’t come for me until after they’re all free and safe. Not before. If I don’t free the kids by then, get them first too. Hopefully by then she’ll be vulnerable enough that we can all…introduce ourselves.”

“I’ll have enough S.W.O.R.D personnel and firepower ready for a proper introduction by then,” Captain Rambeau promised.

“I still hope they won’t need to make it,” Wanda expressed. “It should be me and Vis who…roll credits on her.” She brushed the more Stark than Wanda-esq one-liner aside to share a glance at Vision, with a more unspoken and subtle silent message behind it.

You and me. One last time.

At least she could say that much in her head, if not out loud, right now.

“That’s the Wanda I know. The hero I know,” Vision said out loud, flattering and unsettling her.

“Maybe hero is too strong a word now,” she admitted. A word she barely started to let herself believe she’d earned in the best of times. A word she might never let herself believe she’d earned again after all this, regardless of where she’d end up after it was over.

She didn’t want to look at any gazes that would try to change her mind, if there were any. But her eye then caught something else instead.

She had thought there was no more evidence left of the TV Wandas. Yet there on the kitchen floor, whether it was always there or it just got there, lay the helmet of the 90s costumed Wanda. A helmet that didn’t exactly scream heroic.

Maybe it didn’t have to. Maybe it wasn’t the only thing that didn’t. Whatever the case, it unlocked one more declaration from…whoever Wanda was now.

“But this is the _last_ time I will _ever_ be somebody’s villain.”

***********************************************

It took a few more minutes for Captain Rambeau, Agent Woo and Dr. Lewis to make arrangements for their respective resources, man power and tech to arrive. Once everyone was set in and out of the house, it was time to leave the house…the home…the set…for probably the last time.

After their allies left, Wanda and Vision stood alone on the doorstep, like they would at the beginning or end of any normal episode or credits sequence. The flickering skylight and exterior sets around them were the biggest changes to the script, but at its core it was the same.

Vision bent down to give his TV wife a peck on the lips before going to work, like always. Wanda told her TV husband she would see him when he got back, like always.

From then on in, the script would finally be thrown out for good. For the first time ever, Wanda was consciously okay with that. At least while there were other things to do before the…final scene that had to come.

Until then, though, WandaVision had one last special episode to air. And Wanda had one last question before her best performance ever.

“Shall we take it from the top?”

******************************************

The gateway between worlds was almost open. He would be freed soon. 

Agatha would hand him the Mind Stone and the children in person. They would then escape into another corner of the multiverse, while everyone was too brainwashed or ducking for cover to notice them. And since Wanda hadn’t said no, she supposed she would repair Westview and wash her brain back into pilot mode before she left after all.

One last gift to her leading lady was the least she could do.

First she had a few more minutes of waiting in the fake field, and watching over the unconscious, somehow real children next to her. The wind and the flashing red sky/barrier aside, it was a pretty peaceful way to spend her last minutes in sitcom world.

_Oooohhhh…..ahhhhh!_

Wait…it was long past the opening credits by now. Especially long past the pilot theme song. Then why was she hearing….

_A newly wed couple just moved to town!_

_A regular husband and wife!_

_Who left the big city to find a quiet lllifffeee!_

Ironically, the blast of red magic that struck Agatha out of nowhere drowned out the “quiet” part of the lyric.

When she got on her feet, she tried to drown out the theme music and the other ringing in her head to focus on the townspeople. To command them to come and bring in some reinforcements/human shields, just in case.

But when she reached out, she couldn’t feel them. Not all of them. In fact, she’d just lost her connection to a few more.

Even Dottie wasn’t in her range anymore.

_Wandavision!_

The sounds of the music key changing – and the sounds of the ground under Agatha’s feet being lifted up and taking her up with it – melded together for the next few seconds.

_She’s a magical gal in a small town local!_

_He’s a hubby who’s part machine!_

Agatha flew herself off the rising landscape and into the air, looking for any traces of her attacker. Yet aside from the musical accompaniment, she could see or hear nothing out of the ordinary that she wasn’t controlling.

_How will this duo fit in and pull though?_

Until she felt it coming right below her.

_All while sharing a llooovveee like you’ve never seeenn!_

The blast below her sent her falling back to the ground, tumbling and pratfalling like she was the leading man. She shook her head free of cobwebs, just in time to see the leading lady finally land from the sky, right in front of her.

Landing in tune with the climax of a 50s episode…but dressed like she was in the 90s. Dressed head to toe in her witch’s costume, her helmet framing a facial expression Agatha had never seen on her. Not while they were sharing a scene, anyway.

For the first time since the show was greenlit – for the first time since she’d ever met her in person – Agatha didn’t feel safe around her former co-star.

**************************************

Wanda didn’t know it then, but that look of sudden surprise and fear as Agatha saw her – really saw her – at long last, would be a great source of comfort later. Something to hold on to and remind her it was all worth it.

Even after the actual final battle with Agatha unfolded. Even after the final goodbyes between the WandaVision family. Even after Wanda then seriously prepared herself to turn herself in and accept a likely return to the Raft.

Even after that and much more shattered when…something from the multiverse reached out and took her sons after all.

Even after Captain…Director Rambeau, Agent Woo and Dr. Lewis bought her enough time to escape this reality, and head into the larger multiverse after them.

Even after the untold amount of time she spent in between worlds and realities, hunting for any trace of her kids and the being who took then. The being who pulled Agatha’s strings in order to pull Wanda’s strings, and create the world that created her children.

The being who Wanda wouldn’t find until a red caped sorcerer was pulled into the orbit of her search.

Even after all that and all that followed, whenever she looked back on this particular moment – the moment where Agatha and Wanda herself finally met the witch within her all this time – it would give her no small measure of comfort amidst all the madness of the multiverse.

All that was done by her and to her, all that she had become and let herself believe she was, all she lost and all she remembered she still had, all she was and all she realized she wasn’t…for this one made for TV moment, the Scarlet Witch could let herself believe it was all worth it.

_WANDAVISIOOONNNN!!_

Especially when she put on her best 50’s housewife voice and fake smile to greet her showrunner with a mocking “Hi there, neighbor….”


End file.
